


The Pool of Tears

by Marasa



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Alice in Wonderland, Angst, Anxiety, Dreaming, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:53:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28277160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Greg smoothed his hands over his frilly, blue dress. This was not the way he had been expecting to spend his Friday night.(Succession but it's Alice in Wonderland.)
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans, Stewy Hosseini/Kendall Roy (implied)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	The Pool of Tears

**Author's Note:**

> I had so much fun writing this, so I hope you like it!

Greg smoothed his hands over his frilly, blue dress. This was not the way he had been expecting to spend his Friday night.

Everything turned fuzzy when he tried to remember what had led him here. It was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t quite put it into words. He looked around and found himself in a forest dark which appeared real but in the way recognizing one’s reflection was real—as nothing more than a two-dimensional thing plastered to a limited surface. This was a copy of places both real and fictional, a surreal conglomeration that chilled Greg to his core.

Suddenly there was a movement of something through the trees. Greg bent down slightly, an attempt to remain inconspicuous and quickly hid behind a nearby tree. He peeked around it with great caution.

A gaunt figure in an extravagant waistcoat weaved through the tree trunks thick as elephant legs. He tripped over his feet in his rush, swearing and hissing so frequently, at times he sounded like a whistling tea kettle. Greg squinted and made out the shimmer of gold clasped tightly in his right hand, attached to which was one long gold chain leading back into his pocket. 

The figure turned its head toward him by chance.

_ “Kendall?” _

It was Kendall but somehow not because Kendall wouldn’t dare wear something as theatrical as the long jacket lined with brass buttons and tailored with sharp corners. He was just as frazzled and nervously pale as Greg had seen many times before but instead of a smartphone, he frequently glanced at the pocket watch squeezed in his grip as he practically jogged ahead. 

“Dude! Kendall!” Greg’s black Mary Janes were slippery on the forest floor obscured by leaves over soft loam. Whimsically coiled underbrush caught his striped knee high socks and threatened to rip them. 

“Kendall,” Greg sighed in relief as he finally caught up with his cousin. “I’m so glad to see you—“

“I don’t have time to talk,” Kendall snapped. “I’m late. I’m so fucking late.”

“For what?” 

Kendall didn’t answer; he was too busy dodging trees and watching the second hand slide over the face of the watch. 

“Listen,” Greg said, because it was coming to him now. He was recognizing the surrealness of this place and he thought this might be what was called lucid dreaming, though he couldn’t manage changing his fate and constructing a new scene that was less frightening to him. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. I mean, I was at Waystar. In my office. The new office, and I had an edible. Damn.” He shook his head. “Edibles always do this to me. They hit me hard, dude. I fell asleep while watching Disney movies. Like. Never again, man.”

“I have to be there,” Kendall said, continuing on and sounding increasingly worried. “I can’t fuck this up. This is big shit. Life or death shit, Greg. Are you Team Kendall?”

“Of course, dude! Team Kendall all the way. Just, don’t leave me here alone. I don’t know this place like you do.”

Kendall led him deeper into the wood so the sun disappeared and the world was as dark as night. This was the belly of the beast. It was twisted and strange, grown in the shadows, new to Greg but familiar territory to Kendall. 

Greg turned his attention with a gasp toward a snapping twig to his right. He reached out in his fright to take hold of Kendall’s sleeve.

But Greg’s fingers swept through the air.

He turned forward again, wide-eyed, only to see Kendall impossibly far ahead of him. The forest was growing darker with every step. 

“Hey!” Greg yelled. “Kendall, wait!”

But Kendall did not stop and did not give a single glance backward.

Greg quickened his pace. The forest floor was treacherous and unstable, and he stumbled here and there, his ankle rolling under him, mud staining his striped socks. His heart was racing, sweat percolating at his hairline and it was not long before Greg fell.

The ground was cold beneath his cheek and palms. He pushed himself up but couldn’t muster the motivation to stand; so Greg remained sitting, his dress spread around him in a soft blue circle. Kendall was gone and Greg felt in his dream self’s heightened emotionality the desire to weep. 

This had not been the first time Greg had felt overwhelmed and totally out of his element. It was a rather common occurrence, actually, but stepping into Waystar had evoked the same feeling he felt now. It was strange, a fucking mindtrick where words said were the opposite and the world worked upside down and no one was to be trusted.

“No one is to be trusted? Oh, you can trust me.”

Greg scanned his immediate surroundings for the owner of the voice that resonated so closely but saw no one ahead of him in the dark maze of trees. A snicker echoed around him, maybe even inside of his head. A glowing magenta light caught his eye and pulled his gaze cautiously upward.

Stewy Hosseini sat high above the ground on a tree branch. His purple suit was crisp but just the slightest bit plastic-y, for there appeared to be a strange holographic sheen applied to the fabric’s surface so that the faintest traces of light were reflected in a different color. Waves of bright pink pulsed down his body from shoulder to bare ankle like the rapid, and rather dizzying, color cycling of a cephalopod. 

“Stewy?” Greg suddenly found the strength and will to stand. He wobbled slightly but steadied himself with a degree of hope. “Hey, man, I was chasing after Kendall but these shoes are terrible to run in.” Greg looked down at the muddied sides of his shoes once shiny, now tarnished. When he looked back up less than a second later, Stewy had disappeared. 

Greg might have thought he was imagining him ever really being there until suddenly Stewy was on the ground, emerging from behind a tree in one motion so fluid, he might have been floating. 

“Greg,” Stewy said. “ _ Little egg. _ How the fuck did you end up here?”

Dreams made one’s tongue looser. Dreams drug up the most private of considerations and thoughts gone unknown by even the dreamer themselves and Greg was speaking truths before he could even know what he was saying. 

“My mom wanted me to come,” Greg said. “She’s never been proud of me. She wanted this for me because then…then I’d be something.”

“You were nothing before this?” Stewy’s brow stitched together. “No body, no voice? Waystar pulled you out of air and gave you a reflection?”

Greg stared at him. 

“I need to speak to someone,” he said finally. “Someone higher up.” Greg nodded to himself. “ _ Yeah _ . They’ll know what to do. Is Logan here? What about Tom? Is Tom here?”

“Sure.”

Greg lit up. “Where?”

Stewy pointed to the left. “That way. Or. Wait.” He pointed to the right. “That way. Actually—“

Suddenly, rods of neon pink and fuzzy black light spread out in an array around him like an all encompassing halo. At their ends, arrow heads shining brighter than Broadway and pointing in contradictory directions. 

Greg recoiled from the blinding brightness. He shielded his face with a hand. When his eyes had grown as accustomed to their brilliance as humanly possible, Greg could see Stewy floating upside down at the circle’s center. His smile appeared sharp even in this inverted configuration. 

“Please,” Greg’s voice was pathetic, “Stewy, can you just help me out? Enough games, dude.”

“You’re just like Kendall.” Stewy said it with all the anger of a sordid history. “Do you know how much of an insult that is? You’re just like him—you’ll never stop searching. When will you two realize that everything you want is right  _ here. _ ” In a blink, Stewy was standing no farther than a foot away from him. He placed a hand in the middle of Greg’s chest, his fingernails painted a ruddy plum color. His dark eyes glimmered in the pink light and Greg kind of felt bad for him in that moment. 

The lights fell. The forest was once again cast in a pitch black darkness that sent Greg’s eyes wide with loss of sight. Stewy’s voice was everywhere at once. “He’s lost his way because he’s gone down the path you are looking for right now. Just because you can’t see where you’re stepping doesn’t mean the floor has disappeared from out under you.”

“You can’t guarantee that.”

“Really, Greg—what do you have to lose?”

A path to his right was illuminated with glowing pink footsteps leading off through the trees. Greg was so relieved at the promise of an out. But then a sign manifested and marked the path on his left, of which remained dark and frightening. And the sign read in Stewy Hosseini’s flowing handwriting:  _ Make Your Own Way _

Greg knew Stewy as one of the most honest people he had ever met. Playful, sure, but every one of his words was blunt and honest even when putting on display just how much of a schemer he really was. It was wise to heed his words because he meant them, and that was a rare thing.

But here, Greg was fed up with his mocking smile and his condescension and his obvious preoccupation with Kendall Roy, of which he was taking out on Greg. 

Greg pointed to the sign, had not noticed there to be dirt under his fingernails until now. “Yeah, right,” he snapped. “Really rich coming from you.”

The letters on the sign wobbled and then swirled, rearranging themselves to make a new message: 

_ Fuck You _

Greg set off down the pathway conveniently marked for him. He wasn’t sure where it went, if it led anywhere but he felt better being able to traverse a path already worn for him. 

This pathway led him past many a tree and towering flowers with their sturdy stalks and vibrant petals. Everything was oversized here. ‘A big deal,’ one could say. Everything was overinflated and unreal but surely real to the occupants of this upside-down world of nightmarish whimsy. 

This part of the forest began to transform. Interspersed with the natural wonders were man-made structures, glowing with yellow light bulbs and murmuring tinkling music. The sound of Greg’s mary janes became distinctly audible against the paved stone suddenly beneath his feet and then there was the smell of popcorn and cotton candy.

This was looking familiar. Yes, this place was where it had all started. Brightstar Amusement Park, back when he was in a dog suit, high as fuck, puking his guts out. 

Greg gaped up at the shimmering ferris wheel, giant but still somehow fitting in between the puzzle of trees. This forest might have been never ending. The darkness stretched on forever. 

“Greg? Is that you?”

Greg whipped his head toward the voice. “Tom!” 

Greg was so ecstatic to see him standing there in front of a nearby carnival game booth, he might have wanted to jump up and down or at least jump into Tom’s arms and kiss his face. He hurried over and saw that the game booth was manned by a turkey in a little polo shirt standing beside a bin of balls to be thrown at the targets behind it. 

“What are you doing in a dress, man?”

Greg looked down. He smoothed his hands over the periwinkle silk fabric self-consciously, dusted the soil and leaves off of it. “I don’t know, but I...kinda like it? It’s a lot more comfortable than pants, that’s for sure.”

Tom hummed, unimpressed. He was wearing a striped suit. It was clean and a decent shade of blue in the nearby light of the booth, but the frequency of the lines and their strange yellow hue beget something rather…goofy than eccentrically high class. 

“Shiv,” Tom called over his shoulder without taking his eyes off of Greg’s hairy knees visible just under the hem of his dress, “look at fashionable Mr. Greg’s new style.”

Shiv appeared suddenly from behind her husband. She must have been standing behind him this entire time; Greg just hadn't seen her. 

They were matching. Both Shiv and Tom were wearing the same suit, though it was tailored to their individual body types. Blue with gross yellow stripes. They were a pair, they were—

“Oh.”

Greg guessed this role fit Tom rather well; he was Tweedledum, surely. Goofy and an embarrassment to the Roy family and in particular Shiv who, at times, displayed as much pride in her husband as she would a blemish. Greg had found it easy to connect with Tom because of his lowly status in the overall hierarchy, had felt a kinship in that regard as he too had been the awkward one, the unsure one, the impostor. 

Greg scoffed to himself; look how that had ended up for him.

Shiv, though, she wasn’t dumb. That wasn’t what this was. She was guilty by association, sacrificing a degree of expensive suaveness when marrying the bumbling idiot that was Tom, or at least that was Roman had told Greg. If Shiv suffered from any embarrassing trait in the predatory eyes of the Roy conglomerate, it was quite simply hope. Hopeful, she was, and that might have been as much of a flaw in the grand scheme of things and what had landed her in a terrible yellow-striped suit in Greg’s unconscious mind. 

“I could go for some popcorn actually,” Shiv said. “Greg?”

“No thanks, I’m, uh, not hungry.”

Shiv smiled, looking at him in confusion before reaching out and snatching the half-apron once tied securely around his waist. Greg let out a yelp at the suddenness of the action and the sting of the knotted ties ripping apart against his lower back.

“This should cover it, right?” Shiv asked, looking up her husband. “It looks kind of expensive. Silky, kind of lace-y.”

“Expensive?” Tom scoffed. “I don’t know about that, but it’s good enough for an ol’ popcorn trade.”

Greg pressed a hand to his lower back where his skin burned beneath the dress. “Ow…”

Shiv went off to trade the piece of Greg’s dress for some popcorn at the snack booth while Tom turned to look at him. Greg wasn’t sure what hurt more: his bruising skin or Tom’s failure to stand up for him. Greg wasn’t sure if it had ever been about Tom genuinely caring for him. Sometimes he wondered; Tom kissed him softly but then he’d spit some insult about Greg’s performance or his reliance on foreplay. 

_ “You romantic fuck, you,”  _ was something Greg remembered frequently coming from Tom’s lips. It had stung every time. Tom sounded so annoyed as Greg tried to love him with kisses to the side of his neck, soft licks of his jugular, sweet nothings whispered against his shoulder. Greg’s heart had been on fire and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that Tom had been cold in his arms, so cold. 

At the beginning of their affair, there had been promises that Tom would leave Shiv. That wasn’t what Greg necessarily wanted but Tom had said it and Greg had believed him because he had tasted his tongue and had held him beneath expensive sheets. But as the drama of illegal coverups and attempted coups grew, Tom’s affection seemed to dwindle and he had no time for love, nor any intention of making his relationship with Greg serious.

Greg felt infinitely ganged up on all of a sudden, a victim in many senses but this time, a victim of unrequited love.

“So what? Are you here to take pictures with park guests?” Tom laughed grossly. “I just have to wonder when you’re in that getup.”

“Wh-What? No. I’ve just been walking around trying to find how to get out of here. Like, I saw Kendall and he said he was late for something. He made me jog in these shoes, a-and Stewy, he was putting on a light show? I kind of have a headache now; these lights might be making it worse, actually. Could you, just...could you please help me, Tom?”

Tom chuckled in that aggravating way he did. “What? No. God, no.”

All hope disappeared. Greg’s face dropped.

“Do you know what that would mean for me?” Tom looked Greg up and down. “You do know I have a reputation to protect, right? First, tanking my marriage and now this. How selfish are you, Greg?”

“ _ Tom _ ,” Greg said, his heart hurting and his voice wavering slightly, “I don’t know what to do. I need help, man, and you said—”

“To hell with what I said. People say things all the time. They don’t really mean them. It’s called being polite, Greg.”

Shiv returned with her popcorn. Tom took a kernel, tossed it up in the air and attempted to catch it in his mouth but it bounced off his nose and onto the ground.

Greg, thoroughly aggravated and on the verge of panic now, exploded in a volume that even surprised him. 

“Didn’t you say you’d take care of me? At the beginning, you said you’d look out for me. You’d be there. And look at me now! I’m neck deep in shit, in the fucking  _ death pit _ , with no escape and no rescue coming. All because of you and how you didn’t want to suffer alone.”

“I don’t suffer alone,” Tom said and then he looked at his wife standing beside him. 

“I really loved you. You never cared, did you?” Greg glared, his eyes shimmery in the carnival’s twinkling light. “You used me.”

“Oh, Greg—you would have done the same.”

“No I wouldn’t have!”

“Just wait,” Shiv said, popping another kernel of popcorn into her mouth. “You just got here.”

Greg shook his head. He took a step backwards, hurt and horrified, as he looked between them. “I’m nothing like you.”

“You’re not?” Shiv furrowed her brow. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Fuck this. Greg turned away from the amusement park and his cousin and her traitor husband, his once lover, and back to the path he should’ve just stayed on. 

“We’ll see you later, Greg!” Tom called after him. Greg could imagine him waving. “We’ll see you when you’re different!”

The theme park lights faded. The quiet returned. Greg was alone on the path of his miserable life and at this point, he was feeling quite lonely. If he were in a better mood, he might think the giant mushrooms on either side of him to be rather beautiful. 

He didn’t really care much anymore. 

It started as the faintest trace of fog in the air. Purplish, so thin and pale that Greg swore it was silver. But with every step, the fog thickened and grew denser, cool and heavy on Greg’s skin and in his chest. He tried to keep his eyes on the ground but his eyesight was obstructed and he couldn’t be sure that he was staying on course. 

Greg plastered his hands over his nose and mouth; video games would tell him this might be some poisonous concoction seeping from these flowers. But it was of no use. The heady scent seeped through the seams of his fingers and filled his sinuses. Thankfully, Greg did not drop dead or begin burning from the inside out but the smell did go straight to his head. 

He shook his head. The world teetered. 

Greg was just about to fall to the ground but steadied himself on the edge of a giant mushroom, textured like toadskin except for this edge of sleek fabric brushing his pinky. An amused chuckle resonated through the thick haze, lessening enough now to give sight to a silhouette behind the curtain of smoke. 

Greg pushed up onto his toes to peer upon the figure sitting atop of it.

An abundance of blue silk cloaked him. His body was obscured in the shiny folds of azure fabric. The excess spilled off the right edge of the toadstool and trailed off across the forest floor for what might have been forever. Wrinkled hands gripped the golden mouthpiece of the glass hookah positioned next to him, glowing with the coals like rubies smoldering in the bowl. The thick smoke cleared long enough for Greg to make out a sly smile and black-framed glasses. 

“Oh there you are,” Sandy Furness said in his southern drawl. “Finally decided to show up. Stewy told me all about you. I told him  _ you  _ could probably tell me all about  _ him _ .” 

Greg sank down on his toes slightly so nothing but his eyes were visible from this position. Sandy tapped his bottom lip with the shiny end of hose and narrowed his dark eyes. His smile was slow but dangerous. “You see everything, don’t you?”

Sandy sucked in a lung-shattering hit of whatever he was smoking. The opaque body of lilac smoke exhaled past his lips was an amazement in its sheer volume. It swirled much like the lights in Stewy’s performance, and rearranged itself into complex shapes.

Greg made out a sailboat, the sail billowing in the wind until it inflated like a bubble and burst into a million little sheets of paper floating on the air, the shadows cast by the hookah’s embers creating the illusion of heinous, incriminating words on each of them. Then the smoke convened and it was a dog’s head, cartoonish at first but then growing gaunt and weirdly realistic, its skeletal canine jaw chomping at the air. It changed before Greg could grow too frightened. The smoke folded in on itself in a wavering, circular mass pinching on the left and right and drawing outward.

Greg could not be prepared for when that shape broke open on its horizontal seam, giving sight to the giant, pale purple iris and its all seeing pupil, snapping its attention this way and that before landing on Greg. The hookah behind the image illuminated the whole cloud in one deep shade of red. 

“You have something a lot of us who live here don’t have,” Sandy said as he came back into sight once the eye dissipated into thin air. “You have something I want.  _ Perspective _ . An outsider’s perspective to be exact. You are the people. You are the salt of the earth. You are their hunger. You are the keeper of the pulse of the common man.”

With every flattering word, thick smoke wafted out of Sandy’s mouth and nostrils and through the air and as if sentient, sought refuge hastily up Greg’s nose and within his lungs. The world wavered in a dizzy mess. Greg’s fingertips tingled and while his ego swelled, something in his soul told him being around this much longer would only make him sick.

“S-Stop that!”

The words ceased, as did the smoke. Greg waved the rest hurriedly away with a cough. 

“I’m none of those things,” he said.

Sandy raised an eyebrow and leaned forward to peer down at him. “Then who  _ are _ you?”

Greg thought for a moment, the crease between his eyebrows deepening and the corners of his mouth pulling downward. His voice cracked when he spoke. “I don’t know…”

His chin wrinkled, trembling slightly. He swallowed and traced part of the swirling pattern of the mushroom cap with a finger.

“I was different before all this,” Greg lamented before he could be really sure what he was saying. “I can’t remember exactly but I know it wasn’t like this. Sometimes I can’t sleep. I stay awake and pack a bag, just lying to myself and saying I’ll buy the plane ticket this time. I’ll disappear. I’ll go back home. But then I can’t remember. I can’t remember what’s at home. My mom. She wants me here, but it isn’t fair. Because she doesn’t have to be here like I do. She doesn’t know what goes on and what it can do to someone. I’m not just lost,” Greg said, “I am  _ hunted _ .”

Tears spilled forth from Greg’s eyes and trailed down his cheeks. He took a part of Sandy’s lavish robe and mopped his face with it. A sharp pain stung in the middle of his chest and Greg clutched a hand over it as it subsided, coughing a broken sob as he lay his head on the toadstool. His dark hair, a bit longer now, fell over the side of his face and spread messily on the mushroom’s surface. 

“The ‘you’ of yesterday is dead,” Sandy said after a moment. “It’s scary, but it’s a relief, isn’t it? I’ve died a million times. It’s like a roulette wheel. It’ll spin spin spin, and then it’ll stop. And if you don’t like the ‘you’ it lands on, well then, just spin it again. Constant transformation, son,” Sandy said as he disappeared behind a thick wall of smoke which compelled Greg backwards to save himself from coughing. “Don’t get hung up on this ‘you’; he’s dead already. Just keep transforming...keep transforming...”

Greg stumbled blindly backwards, coughing and chasing away smoke with his hands. Miraculously, he avoided colliding with any trees and thought it a mistake once he could see clearly again that he had emerged from the line of the trees and into a clearing. He whipped around. At the clearing’s middle was positioned a boardroom table if only half-occupied. Gerri was in attendance as was Karolina, Tabitha, Laird and Karl, and beside them, Frank.

“You can’t stand Frank, though,” Greg told Roman sitting at the head of the table, brow knitted together. 

Frank droned his unenthusiastic answer. “He doesn’t know how to make tea and I do.”

Roman’s face twisted in angry embarrassment. He took a nearby teacup and pelted it down the table toward Frank. It didn’t reach him but shattered on the table into a million porcelain pieces, all of which were drenched in tea. 

Gerri remained unmoved and rather unimpressed. 

Roman was a boy king here, a child playing dress up. His purple velvet coat was gaudy and his hat suggested the same stability in structure as the tower of Babble. Roman might have always wanted to be taller. The illusion of height his hat offered was pathetic at best but Greg bit his tongue; he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to dodge a teacup thrown at him at such a close distance. 

“Are you gonna sit down or are you just gonna continue casting a gangly shadow over the entire fucking table?” Roman barked. 

“Oh, sorry.” Greg sat down in the nearest office chair.

“Good thing you’re here,” Roman said and for the first time, Greg felt kind of wanted. “You’re the seventh vote here at this table, so you’ll be the tie breaker if we need one.”

“Seventh vote for what?”

“The next vote! You’ll want to have a say in this one. Wait, what time is it? We can’t be late.” Roman checked his watch. “It says, um...five...yeah, or eight. No, eleven—“

“Babe, you don’t have to pretend,” Tabitha said with a roll of her eyes. 

“Yes, Roman; we all know you’ve never been able to tell time.”

“Shut up, Frank!”

More projectiles, more dramatics. He was exhausting.

“You’re right,” Roman finally relented, sounding fed-up, “but it’s because we’re caught in a time loop. We’re caught in a loop but we keep getting older. It shouldn’t work like that.” Roman shook his head, appearing genuinely perplexed. “I haven’t moved a single step forward since I was a kid and look at me now. Thirty-six years old. A little gray here and there. Achy.” He grimaced. “ _ Fuck!” _

Another teacup was launched down the length of the table. Greg flinched away from it.

“Only one person can fix it. Only one person can break us out of this constant cycle that goes fucking nowhere.”

“W-Who?” Greg asked cautiously. 

Roman turned, wickedly. “The King.”

Dread pooled in the pit of Greg’s stomach. Roman, still gaudy and over the top, appeared dangerous as long as he was leaning forward with his hands planted on the table, the brim of his hat casting a shadow over his face.

“The King of this place works in human sacrifice. He swarms to blood like a shark. He does wonders for those who give him what he wants. He can change your life. Or he can end it.”

Those at the table were suddenly more preoccupied with their tea, their faces sullen.

“Should we have the vote?” Roman asked them. 

“What are we voting on?” Greg’s fingernails bit into his palms. “Roman, what are you voting on?”

Roman’s mouth pulled into a disgusting smirk. “Whether we turn you in dead or alive.”

All was still for a tense moment and then Greg bolted from his chair so quickly that it toppled to the ground. Greg was quick but Roman was quicker as he smashed a glowing red button on the office phone balancing precariously on the corner of the table stained, sticky, with spilled tea.

It was not even a second later before a myriad of men stormed the clearing as if they had been waiting in the treeline all this time. They were coming straight for Greg who cowered with his hands lifted in front of him as his only defense and a useless, yelped,  _ “Hey!” _

The King’s heartless bodyguards in their shiny, red suits effortlessly scooped Greg up onto their burly shoulders. Greg kicked and screamed but did not shake the hold they had on him as he was transported anyway.

He had no idea where he was being taken; he was back in the forest and then out into a clearing and now inside of a building but he could not decipher from the decorative ceiling where he might be. This could be where the King lived, a castle, but then Greg’s impression shifted when he was set upright just in time to see they had arrived at the Senate, a truth of his real life that was surely awaiting him once he woke. He was complicit in the Roys’ crimes and his worst nightmare manifested itself here in a large room with too many seats and the authority to ruin his life forever.

Greg was dropped into the sole seat before the monstrous throne of the king. He looked to his right in bewilderment, his left, finally up at the weathered lion of a man weighed down by gold jewelry and rings.

“This is him?” Logan Roy’s eyebrow twitched upward. He coughed a dry scoff, trailing off in a growl that reverberated in Greg’s entire being. “What a joke.”

A crowd of familiar faces had since gathered in the numerous seats behind Greg. The tea party’s guests were in attendance, led by a fuming Roman. Tom and Shiv stood side by side, Shiv’s expression unimpressed but Tom looking somewhat conflicted until he averted his gaze to steel himself. At times, there was a glowing flash of pink in Greg’s periphery, but when he snapped his eyes toward it, it was gone. 

“The following are the crimes of Gregory Hirsch,” said a man standing at the foot of Logan’s towering throne, who Greg recognized after a moment to be Ratfucker Sam. He read from a scroll in his hands like some terrifying iteration of Santa Claus, or maybe he was Krampus in this instance as he began reading off Greg’s sins. “Destruction of incriminating evidence. Willful participation in the cruises cover-up. Collusion with enemy journalists. But more seriously,” his voice grew darker with a degree of chilling severity, “deception of the Roy family and treason, both of which are offenses punishable by death.”

Greg swallowed, his hands gripping tightly to either side of his chair. 

“A trial will be conducted to determine your fate, however, before any judgment is made” and Ratfucker Sam sounded kind of disappointed. 

Logan’s dark eyes bore into Greg from his height of power. The ghost of a smirk pulled at his lips. Uncle Logan turned to those in attendance, reclining in his chair, his fingers intertwined in front of him thoughtfully. “Let’s get the fuck on with it. So,” he mused, “who is this ‘Greg’? How can we use him?”

There were some words spoken on his behalf from those behind him, but all reasons to keep him alive seemed rather insignificant. 

“He just doesn’t fit in,” Shiv said finally. “I know we all thought that about Tom, but it’s true this time. Greg really doesn’t fit in. He’s treading water. We shouldn’t waste time or resources trying to save him when he has so little to offer.

“Exactly,” Roman piped up, sounding agitated still. “He can’t function here. He’s not cut out for it. Just look at the little dweeb!”

Greg tried to speak on his own behalf but his voice had gone away from him and all that he could muster was a hiss of breath out of his throat, sounding shocked and uncertain. Logan was silent in thought as he weighed their consideration. He nodded to himself with a far away look in his eye. He made a noise of affirmation before turning back to Greg.

“There is no use for you, Greg,” Logan said matter-of-factly, “all outside of one very useful part of you that I can use.” He leaned forward in his chair, towering like a monolith of a long gone archaic world of emperors and gold-plated palaces. “Your heart.”

Greg’s hand went to the center of his chest as if on instinct to protect his last shred of humanity. 

“Hearts don’t last long here. This empire of mine—it curdles hearts like old milk. It dries them out until they’re wrinkled and rotten. But I can hear yours still beating in your chest. I can’t even remember the warmth of a heart, the love residing there.” Logan appeared tragically reflective. “Only sometimes do I remember. Help me remember, Greg; I want your heart in my hand.”

“I made it! I made it!”

Kendall busted through the Senate doors, out of breath and flushed in the face. There was that flash of pink again in Greg’s periphery, brighter this time.

Greg bolted upright out of his seat but was pushed back down by a hand on his shoulder. “Kendall!”

“I made it just in time.” Kendall turned to Logan. “What’s the verdict?”

“Guilty,” Logan growled. “Out with his heart.”

A flurry of limbs and hands and fingers like claws descended upon him. They were indiscernible and coming from every direction. Greg cried out for help but help didn’t come. He was sinking deeper, deeper, everything going dark—

“Greg. Hey.  _ Greg. _ ”

Greg’s eyes flew open with a jolt. He scanned the room for threat while fear continued to choke him. His laptop on the coffee table in front of him had died, erasing all images of his nightmarish Disney movie endeavor. The Senate had dissolved away to the image of his personal office at Waystar. The expansive window was dark, glittering with Manhattan’s late night lights and passing cars far down below. This was immediately more defined, more real, and Greg looked to see that he wasn’t wearing a dress any longer but an unbuckled pair of work slacks, his button down he’d worn at work all day open to reveal his white undershirt. His heart raced against his sweaty palm when he pressed it there.

“What are you doing, man?” Tom smiled. “Are you planning on spending the night here? C’mon, let’s go.”

Greg blinked up at him for a second. Then he sat up and leaned forward to hug Tom tightly. 

“Greg?”

Greg squeezed his eyes shut and leaned further against Tom’s warm stomach. His fingers tightened at the back of Tom’s jacket. 

“Hey,” Tom said quietly, sounding truly worried. Greg made a pathetic noise when Tom’s fingers threaded through his hair. “What’s wrong?”

“Bad dream,” Greg murmured.

“Oh. Well. It’s over now.” When Greg did not let up on his grip, Tom sat down on the office couch and better accommodated him in his arms so Greg rested on his shoulder, still clinging. Tom placed a hand on Greg’s back. His thumb stroked there between his shoulder blades and over his spine. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Greg shook his head tightly. He found that he missed Tom despite the fact he had him in his arms right now. He still seemed so far away and everything still seemed menacing even in waking life, and it was only in great turmoil that Greg was given someone’s time and attention and comfort. 

He drew in a breath and choked on it, coughing a few sobs into Tom’s shoulder, as his slender hands shook on Tom’s back. 

“Oh, Greg—”

“I’m just really having a hard time.” Greg sucked in a stuttered breath as tears trailed down his cheeks. “I’m having such a hard time.”

“I know. I know you are. C’mere,” Tom murmured even though there was no space between them. And despite his best efforts, Greg fell momentarily into the feeling of Tom’s lips pressing a kiss to his head, another just under his ear.

Thinking back on the dream, details began to fall away. It blurred and time was irrelevant, each situation swapping its chronological order so it was a mess that he remembered sporadically. The fear remained, the hopelessness too, but then there was a break in Greg’s breakdown as he rested in the arms of a man who he loved but wasn’t sure loved him. There was one aspect of the dream that stuck out, bright and blaring, crystal-clear and neon, and this single phrase felt like some kind of out, a shred of hope, a new beginning, though he couldn’t see it until now:

_ Make Your Own Way. _

**Author's Note:**

> (Stewy's suit was inspired by [this suit](https://images.app.goo.gl/mkZQ4eZnvhEqfGnX6) from the movie "Ichi the Killer." It's pure magic how it literally just turns different colors in the blink of an eye. Here's [a video](https://youtu.be/AG-3zq6sswY) if you want to see it in action. It's so cool😩)


End file.
